Acid Storm, F-15 form

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all had a good week so far and looking forward to a weekend of rest! Just a disclaimer out there, I currently do not have my warhammer collection with me now, so most of the pics coming out will have a modern military/sci-fi theme. Once summer comes, I will have access to my WFB minis. But from what I heard...JQ has been playing quite a bit with a community of WFB players and has learned a crap load of tactica and collected many tales to share. Now that's something to look forward to!

Well, I'll be presenting Acid Storm once again, but in his F-15 form (which I think is one of the best looking planes).

Top-down view of Acid Storm (F-15)

Looking at the F-15 design now, it amazes me that the plane has already flown for almost 40 years (by 2012) since its maiden flight! In addition, the Eagle has 30 over years of active duty under its belt and it has been claimed that none have been shot down in air-to-air combat, but some Russian sources actually claimed that the MiG-23ML flown by Syria actually shot down 3 Israeli F-15s (wikipedia). Even then, 104:3 is still a pretty darned good ratio. Of course others are quick to point that they were deployed against comparatively poorly trained pilots...I am not sure what will happen if they met MiGs with pilots of equal calibre and similar weaponry.

The ubiquitous Decepticon icon...

Also...back then the F-15 was born at the height of the Cold War, as the US and USSR were tirelessly comparing their aircraft against each other in a constant arms race. And now it's a completely different story, war has become less "orthodox" with formal armies facing quasi-governmental militias and multiple fundamentalist groups. Even then, new fighters would still remain cutting edge (since it's so expensive to design, test, make one + train pilots). An obvious guess is that stealth will be a big thing for the fighters of the future (since the F117 and B-2 pretty much flew with impunity) and it seems that while US has operational stealth planes...Russia and China are in the process of designing theirs too. (fun fact: F-35B SVTOL design had some technical input from Yakolev, who designed the canceled Yak 141-Freestyle)

F-15 from the front.

Looking at the events in Libya, I really hope and pray that a constructive future can be found in the midst of the chaos and tyranny. Gaddafi's really bleeding the country more each day he holds onto power, and even if he left more chaos would ensue. Speaking of the conflict...a F-15E Strike Eagle actually crashed on the 3rd day of the strikes, due to mechanical failure and not enemy fire. I guess that's a sign of the F-15's age catching up...

The crashed F-15E Strike Eagle, both pilots were rescued to safety (the Australian).

If you're interested, the BBC compiled a list of weaponry that is being deployed by the coalition forces, which is kinda cool to see what specifically was used and admitted by the governments. As expected the US does have a hack of a lot of stuff there! You can check it out here.

Libyan rebels cheering along a beach on top of a T-54/55, early in the conflict (worldculturepictorial.com).